I'm here again. And I am adding a recipe. Surprise surprise, right? So sorry I am not the best at this whole writing thing considering I take the pictures and do the cooking. Well sometimes I photograph.....I have been baking a lot but well haven't really been taking pictures of those things which is rather sad considering I've been a pretty big baking fool. Yesterday, for instants, I made hummingbird cake which I have been wanting to for a while now. It consists of crushed pineapple and mashed bananas with cream cheese frosting. It was pretty delicious not going to lie and AND I was able to put it together without absolutely destroying it. I've also made strawberry cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, and toffee cookies. All delicious.

So the recipe I bring you today is Thai-Roasted Tofu with Chili and Basil from Weight watchers

I changed a few things but kept it pretty close to its original recipe.

Ingredients

• 14 oz extra firm tofu cut into slices


• 3 tbsp soy sauce


• 2 tsp olive oil


• 2 tbsp ginger root


• 1 garlic clove


• red pepper flakes to taste


• 3.5 oz shiitake mushrooms, sliced


• 1 bell pepper sliced


• 1 cup string beans, trimmed and cut in half


• 2 tbsp teriyaki sauce


• shredded basil
  
• scallions, sliced
  

Place the tofu on several sheets of paper towels and place more paper towels over the tofu. Set a cooking tray on top and put some heavy objects on top to squeeze the water out. Keep the tofu like this for about 20 to 30 minutes or until you feel as much moisture is out as possible.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Dice the tofu up into small cubes. Spray the cookie sheet with cooking spray and place tofu on top. Take some of the soy sauce and brush the soy sauce on top of the cubes. Spray the tofu with cooking spray.

Roast in the oven for about 25 min but depending on size of tofu I would recommend watching it once it hits the 20 or even 15 mark.

Put the oil in a skillet big enough to hold all the ingredients. Add the garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes and stir until fragrant. Add the mushrooms next and cook until softened. Once the mushrooms are ready add the green beans and peppers. Stir until the vegetables are cooked through.

Add the remaining soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, basil, scallions, and tofu. Mix together until all is heated through.

Serve!

P.S. Rice is included in the recipe but I did not use it. Simply cook up some brown rice and add to the vegetables at the end and your good to go!

Blueberry Crumb Bars

So I know it has been a while....ok it has been a really really long time. I can't help it! Graduation came, AP test to study for! Way too much I say so I would just blame my teachers but I am here again and with Blueberry Crumb Bars by Smittenkitchen. Yum. Unbelievably yum.

These bars are without a doubt one of the prettiest things I have ever made. The blueberry layer and the crumbly top come out perfect together and really bring out the gorgeous colors of the blueberries!

Again. I repeat....YUM!

Easy Vegetable Soup



It has snowed a lot over the last two weeks. I have missed around 5 days of school which in all reality I'm not complaining but I am so completely lost. What am I doing in school? Well good question, I don't know. I feel like I should be doing something and I am getting backed up with my scholarships and AP studying but it is like time stopped. It doesn't really feel like I am wasting my day and time is continuing. This is bad, really bad. I feel sort of useless. I need a schedule really bad but another plus is I am about to go to Disney! Missing school again for that...

When I get back I hope everything will work out and I will find myself on track again, I am in dire need of it.

Vegetable soup, one of the easiest things to make and possibly one of the most delicious.
This simply consist of me throwing a ton of vegetables in a pot with some chicken broth, garlic, and two thyme sprigs. It came out just as I had hoped and my boyfriend absolutely loved it, so I must have done something right! Actually I wish there was some still left....

So go and make vegetable soup, you'll be glad you did.

Peanut butter Cookies Sandwiches

Yum.

Originally I am not a big peanut butter cookie fan and in all reality probably wouldn't like these without the filling. Harsh, but sort of true. I am sure the cookies were fine plain too but if you can put filling in them then whats the point of having them plain?!

Sadly I made these for no reason but too simply bake and I was left with all these cookies! Not that that is really a terrible problem to have but trying to watch my weight with a ton of delicious cookies around is not good.

So, I fed them to my mom's work. Of course a couple friends too. They all liked them so I'm pretty sure this recipe was a hit! Not to mention it was from Joythebaker and well she is fantastic. I love all of her recipes and always tend to go back for more!

So here is her amazing recipe. I would recommend checking her blog out and making these cookies of course.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt

Filling

• 2 cups crunchy peanut butter (I mixed it with smooth too)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (pretty much liquid)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375

Mix together peanut butter and butter. Mix on medium until well combined. Add sugar and brown sugar and mix until incorporated. Then add the egg and do the same.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and add to mixture slowly. Mix until fully combined, my dough was pretty thick too the point that no dough stuck to the side of the bowl. If your dough needs to harden stick the fridge for about 30 min.

Make about a tbs round balls. Press with a fork to make the decorations on the cookies. Cook for about 7-10 min until slightly brown on the top.

As the cookies cool, mix the filling ingredients with your mixture. When I created the filling it was a little bit of an experiment but take the basic idea and add what you think will taste the best. Sorry!

To finish them up just add the filling and combine two sandwiches and you have your Peanut Butter Sandwiches. Take and enjoy!

Homemade Yeast Pretzels.



I finally tackled the yeast monster.
I would like to be able to say that I did it perfectly and it was so completely easy but well I messed up. Go figure. I probably should have researched a little more and got more comfortable with how to use it but I was feeling ambitious and just wanted to go! Well bad move, instead of using dry active yeast I used high active yeast, or something like that. As I began to knead I knew that something wasn't right. My dough was dry, and crumbly and the recipe specifically said it should feel tacky. Ok, something isn't right.

To the store I go. To get dry active yeast.

With the left over dough I felt like it was just too sad to throw away so I turned the oven on at 425, sprayed some cooking spray on "rolls" that I had made out of it and stuck it in. I watched the time and eventually whipped them out. What appeared seemed rather pleasing. See I am a bread lover. You put a giant cookie in front of me and a loaf of bread, well lets just say the cookie can go to the cookie monster. I want my bread. So maybe these rolls were horrible but I couldn't help but like them. I mean you could defiantly tell something was a little off but I didn't die when I ate them! So their good to me.

Back to the pretzels. These pretzels were good. I got the approval from my best friend, parents, and my boyfriend. That's pretty good, right? After I got the correct yeast, it worked out fine. These did take a long time to make but mostly because of having to roll out each pretzel and shaping them. It really wasn't too bad through, much better then I would have thought. And so the yeast demon is defeated. I can use yeast and oh how I plan too. Nothing beats the taste of freshly made bread. Yum.

Homemade Pretzels

Ingredients

• 1 package dry yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 6 cups water
• 2 tbs baking soda
• 1 tsp cornmeal
• 1 tsp water
• 1 egg
• salt or sesame seeds for toppings

Combine the yeast, sugar, and warm water together and let sit for 5 minutes. Make sure the yeast is active.

Combine the 3 cups flour and salt together and slowly add it to yeast mixture. Stir until dough forms. Prepare a surface to knead the dough with a lightly floured surface. Put dough out and begin to knead for about 8 minutes, adding flour if sticky. Try to add as small amount as possible. Place dough into a large bowl coated with cooking spray, covering with a wet towel. Let rise for 40 min.

Press dough with two fingers. If indentation remains then the dough is ready. Punch dough down and cover again for another 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425

Divide dough into 12 portions and roll out the dough and shape into a pretzel. Place on a baking sheet, slightly coated with cooking spray. Keep dough covered as you continue the process. Cover and let rise for 10 min after you have made all 12 pretzels.

Combine 6 cups of water and baking soda in an non aluminum dutch oven. Bring to a boil and let simmer. Lower one pretzel into the water and cook for 15 sec and flip over and cook for another 15 sec. Continue with remaining pretzels.

Place pretzels on a baking sheet coated with cornmeal. Mix egg and water together and brush the pretzels with the mixture. Coat with according toppings.

Place in oven for 12 min.

Your homemade pretzels are ready to eat!

Oh, and this recipe is once again courtesy of cooking light. Seriously get the book, it is amazing!

Snow day today. Sort of happy, sort of not. I have been dying for a snow day ALL YEAR but the one time I don't want one, well we have one. Really? I am gong to Disney next week and I'm going to miss about three days of school and I don't want all my tests to be pushed back to those three days! All well, I guess just take advantage of the snow day.

Which is why I have the chance to enlighten you about a very delicious recipe.

I want to cook, mostly bake, so bad lately. It's to the point where I am asking people if they want me to make them anything, practically pleading them to let me. My mother finally caved and told me I could make her muffins to bring to her work, so tah dah yummy delicious Sour Cream Muffins with Poppy seed Streusal Topping.

They were light. They were fantastic. I will make these again. and again. and again.

Sour Cream Muffins with Poppy seed Streusal Topping

recipe courtesy of The Best of Cooking Light Everyday Favorites

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour


• 3/4 cup sugar


• 2 tsp baking powder


• 1 tsp baking soda
  
• 1/2 tsp salt


• 3/4 cup fat-free buttermilk
  
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
  
• 1 tbs grated orange


• 1 tsp vanilla extract


• 1 large egg


• 8 oz reduced fat sour cream
  

streusal topping

• 3 tbs sugar


• 2 tbs flour


• 1 tbs butter, melted


• 1 tsp poppy seeds
  

Preheat oven to 375

Add the dry mixtures together, the first 5 ingredients. Stir together the liquid ingredients, or the remaining ingredients and pour over the dry. Stir until mixed throughout and a dough consistency appears.

Spoon the batter into 15 (I ended up with around 17, it all just depends on how big you want your muffin) muffin cups.

Mix the streusal toppings into another bowl until crumbly. Sprinkle the toppings over the prepared muffin cups.

Place the muffins in the oven for about 18 min, varying depending on the amount you put in each cup. Watch until the muffins start to turn a little golden on the top.

Then enjoy!

So I am giving this a go again.

Sorry, I am sort of a failure when it comes to being consistent I've come to realize that. School had started, my senior year of all years, and well it just sort of went down hill from there. I wasn't able to cook as much as I did in the summer, especially during band season, and then I just got caught up with college applications and scholarship stuff. Who ever said that senior year was the best? Well they lied. It is not fun at all and in fact sucks really bad. I have worked a lot this year which was not suppose to happen at all and senioritis has kicked in double drive. Such a drag. To top that off i have no pictures of the things I have made to give you, but trust me there has been quite a bit. Peanut butter rice krispies, an apple cake, several cookies, some failed brownies, apple crisp, all made it into my kitchen yet my camera magically was lost during that time. Sorry again for such the sad disappointment. But I bring you the cookies that I have been made famous for, well not famous but my friends practically drool over them. There simply sugar cookies, nothing dramatic.


But they are amazing, I have to admit. The best part of course is licking the cookie dough, oh man oh man is that good cookie dough.



These sugar cookies are not suppose to be sugar cookies. They were originally suppose too be snicker doodle cookies, which I also made with this recipe and was also extremely good, but I wanted sugar cookies. So, that's what they became. The recipe is the snicker doodle recipe off of http://www.joyofbaking.com/, just simply exclude rolling the dough in cinnamon and sugar.

My friends demand these cookies and for good reason really. They are amazing.

P.S. I am apologizing for my horrible grammar in advanced. I am in Honors English but grammar, well lets just say that's not why I am in Honors English.